••can ye pass the acid test?••

ye who enter here be afraid, but do what ye must -- to defeat your fear ye must defy it.

& defeat it ye must, for only then can we begin to realize liberty & justice for all.

time bomb tick tock? nervous tic talk? war on war?

or just a blog crying in the wilderness, trying to make sense of it all, terror-fried by hate radio and FOX, the number of whose name is 666??? (coincidence?)

Thursday, March 18, 2010

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A Japanese-American lawmaker took offense Wednesday after Republican Senator Lindsey Graham likened the Democrats' drive on health care to a Japanese suicide attack in World War II.

Graham, in a radio interview in his home state of South Carolina, lashed out at the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, over her efforts to bring Democrats in line to approve health care reform, a top priority for President Barack Obama.

"Nancy Pelosi, I think, has got them all liquored up on sake and you know, they're making a suicide run here," Graham said.

Representative Mike Honda, who spent part of his childhood interned due to his Japanese origin, asked Graham to "show respect for our fellow Americans."

"I am disheartened that Senator Graham chose to use racially tinged rhetoric to express his opposition to health care reform," said Honda, who heads the Asian-American caucus in Congress.

"There is a way to engage in healthy debate without alienating Asian-Americans, who are an important part of this democracy and health care reform," he said in remarks that he partially posted on Twitter.

Honda, a Democrat from California, is a strong proponent of the bill which aims to extend coverage to at least 31 million uninsured Americans and end abusive practices by insurance companies.

Graham replied that he was making a broader point -- that he believed there was already too much government involvement in health care.

"My comments really reflect the fanaticism of the Democratic leadership. And I don't know whether (it was) sake or moonshine, but no sober person would do this," he said.

"What I would ask the congressman to do is stop this process (so that) all Americans, Japanese-Americans included, do not need to lose their choice in health care," Graham told Fox News.

The explanation did not assuage Honda, who hit back that health care reform would in fact open up choices for Americans by "putting the health care industry in its place."

"For the senator to add 'moonshiners' to an already unsavory sake and suicide statement does a disservice to the underlying issue," Honda said.

"I question who has, in fact -- to use the senator's words -- lost their political mind."

The row comes a year after another Republican senator, Charles Grassley, upset some Asian-Americans by suggesting that executives of bailed-out insurer AIG should commit suicide after accepting millions of dollars in bonuses.

"In the case of the Japanese, they usually commit suicide before they make any apology," Grassley had told a radio station in his home state of Iowa. He later said his remarks were "exaggerated."
my first impression of lindsey graham comes from when he asked "is this watergate or peyton place?" during a house of representatives impeachment hearing a dozen years ago. he was trying to look like a moderate who would consider all the evidence before passing judgment. he wound up voting not quite in lockstep with his fellow gops and so succeeded in projecting that judicious and impartial image that he moved to the senate four years later with a 10-point victory. his online bio says he is "known as a leader who never abandons his independence or strays from the conservative reform agenda."

a few years later he got involved in hamdan v. rumsfeld, whose wikipedia article contains this paragraph:

An unusual aspect of the case was an amicus brief filed by Senators Jon Kyl and Lindsey Graham, which presented an “extensive colloquy” added to the Congressional record as evidence that "Congress was aware" that the Detainee Treatment Act would strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction to hear cases brought by the Guantanamo detainees. Because these statements were not actually included in the December 21 debate, Emily Bazelon of Slate magazine has argued this was an attempt to mislead the court.
more recently graham exploited dem desires for bipartisanship to get senators kerry and lieberman to agree to modify climate legislation so as to promote offshore drilling, along with nuclear energy and "clean" coal technology.

considering where he's coming from, i guess suicide's not that big a stretch after all.

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